Why Kara Runs
by Queen's Chalice
Summary: A little-known fact about Kara Thrace was that she hated running... The punchline was that nobody would believe her if she told them. A brief look at what motivates Kara to go for her morning run. One-shot. Loosely set in Season 1. No spoilers.
_Disclaimer: This is a not-for-profit fan work. I do not own Battlestar Galactica. I think Universal Studios does. And_ nobody _owns Starbuck._

XXX

It was 0600 and an alarm was chirping, rousing Kara from much-needed sleep. Time for her morning run. She grimaced and raked her hair out of her face as she tried to blink the slumber from her eyes.

A little-known fact about Kara Thrace was that she hated running.

The punchline was that nobody aboard _Galactica_ would ever actually believe it if she told them… Well, there was maybe _one_ person who would: someone who - and the irony wasn't lost on her - occasionally joined her as a running partner, at least up until recently. But since she wasn't currently on speaking terms with that smug turd, she decided that he didn't count.

The simple truth was that, though she did it every morning like clockwork, Kara absolutely loathed running. But reveille would chime, and she'd shove her feet into her battered trainers and go. On a good day, it made her lungs sting and calves protest. On bad days, her bum knee would be screaming at her before she even started.

And yet she still hauled her sorry ass out of her rack, day after day, to go running.

Why?

Well, what the hell else could she do? The list of people she could count on had been short _before_ the end of the worlds, and it sure as shit hadn't gotten any longer since. There was nothing, no other physical release of pent-up energy, that relied solely on her. (Except masturbation of course, but it was damned near impossible to find a quiet moment alone with her favorite hand these days.)

Pyramid was obviously out. It required a ball, a court she didn't have, and nine other people to play. And boxing was no fun without a second person, because hitting a bag that didn't hit back got boring really frakking quick.

Before the colonies had gotten nuked, she'd taken a few trapeze classes at a studio near her apartment in Delphi. Honestly, she shouldn't have been so surprised to discover just how much she enjoyed twisting and somersaulting through the air. It was just like flying, only without the Viper. Too bad she'd never find a trapeze anywhere in their sad little fleet. The Chief would probably rig something up for her if she asked nicely enough, but she could just imagine the spectacular shit-show _that_ would turn into.

An image of the Commander, wearing a ringmaster's tailed coat and top hat, popped into her mind. "Step right up folks, don't be shy!" he would shout at the deckhands in his booming, no-nonsense voice. "It is my pleasure to introduce the magnificent, high-flying Starbuck! Prepare to be amazed as she performs fearsome feats and gravity-defying stunts for your entertainment!" And then the lights on the hangar deck would dim, leaving only a single spotlight on Kara as she swooped down from the darkness on her trapeze.

Yeah, right.

She'd be damned if she let the crew of _Galactica_ watch her do circus tricks. Shameless as she was, she had to draw the line somewhere. And that somewhere was most decidedly right before any activities that involved wearing a sequined unitard... In public. Which unfortunately meant that trapeze was out too.

When she was seventeen, she went to hot yoga. Once. It only took fifteen minutes for her to get kicked out. Some bullshit about "disturbing the peaceful flow of energy." What a load of trite garbage that was. As if it were _her_ fault that the guy in front of her was wearing teensy little shorts that appeared to be made of single-ply tissue paper, leaving her with a front-row seat to the most hilariously droopy nutsack she had ever had seen.

The whole thing was pure frakking gold. It was downright unreasonable to expect her to keep her mouth shut at a sight like that, but somehow she had managed… Right up until the moment that they moved into the down dog position, and the man passed gas with such incredible force that his saggy old balls quivered in response. Fast-forward about thirty seconds, and she found herself being hastily ushered from the room by the instructor, cramping and wheezing from laughter as tears painted lines down her cheeks.

So… That left her with running.

She'd started the habit in high school, at the insistence of her pyramid coach. Though she could appreciate the logic behind cross-training, she'd despised running even more back then, before she'd properly learned to dissociate. Only copious amounts of practice in the years since had honed her ability to detach herself from the task at hand. She had begun developing her method in basic training, and had it perfected by the time she reached the Academy.

 _Left, right. Heel, toe. Inhale, exhale._ These were the types of minute details on which she focused as she began her routine of isolating herself from the experience. One after the other, her feet pounded against the deck in a mounting percussion, setting the rhythm for her escape from reality. As her stride picked up momentum, the world around her started to fall away.

The sounds of the bustling ship became muted; faces morphed into shapeless blobs of color. She concentrated on drawing out this step of the process for as long as she possibly could. Bit by bit, her senses dulled until all she was left with was the vague sensation of something resembling freedom.

In that moment, her mantra would reach its crescendo. Time would stop for what felt like eternity, and all would be silent. She was transcendent. Omnipotent. Not a godsdamned thing could hold her back, and it was beautiful.

And then all hell would break loose.

When that climactic moment finally hit, her tether would snap, and all the sounds and lights and harsh edges would come rushing back in like a searing poker to the brain. Then her mother's raspy voice would echo in her ears: "Don't stop now, Kara, you pathetic little shit! Use the pain. Let it fuel you." And her pace would increase as she pushed harder against the growing strain on her body, testing and stretching its limits.

At this point, she would allow herself a small burst of pride at how long she'd been able to make it before breaking that time. Back when she was a kid, she barely lasted a few seconds before she was snarling and seething and ready to tear apart the first person who looked at her wrong. She had come a long way since then.

Progress, not perfection. Every time that she refrained from losing her shit on an innocent bystander was an accomplishment.

By the time she was done with her run, she always felt ready to barf up a lung and then lay down and die. But then the permanent ache in her frakked-up knee would subside just a little, and she would walk with a smooth, unlabored gait for the rest of the day. She'd have a slightly easier time falling asleep that night, all because she had bothered to purge some of the excess energy that coursed endlessly through her veins.

It was a weak incentive, but it was enough. On the days that she ran, she didn't feel like she was precariously teetering on the edge of suffocating despair. It was as though she funneled the entire day's allotment of misery into that one specific event, and when it was over, she was lighter for it.

So she'd go running again the next morning. And the morning after that. And so on.

But just for the record, Kara hated every godsdamned second of it.

Sitting up in bed, she flipped the bedcovers aside and swung her legs out of her rack. She leaned down and grabbed her shoes.


End file.
